Peirce’s Pragmatic Maxim: Realist or Nominalist?

This chapter argues that American pragmatism is not to be simply identified with positivism. Positivism refers to a rather extreme form of nominalism that developed along the lines of classical empiricism. Nominalism refers to any philosophical doctrine that denies the reality of general ideas as part of the ontological structure of things. While this is an incomplete characterization of positivism, it is sufficient in the sense that these essential notes of nominalism are what the chapter denies of pragmaticism as developed by Charles Sanders Peirce. It should also be said at the outset that certain forms of classical rationalism are likewise nominalistic and have developed into a type of positivism all their own.